1
Aphid
Aphidoidea (superfamily — many species)
A tiny soft-bodied sap-sucking insect that reproduces astonishingly fast through asexual cloning — the gardener's nemesis on roses, vegetables, and fruit, and the prey ladybugs evolved to control.
Looking for 5-letter insects? Here are 6 insects that fit — each linked to a full profile.
Letters are counted across the whole name with spaces, hyphens, apostrophes, and diacritics excluded. "Apple Pie" is 8 letters; "Boeuf Bourguignon" is 16.
List of 5-letter Insects
2
Leech
Hirudinea (subclass)
A blood-feeding annelid worm — used in medicine for over 2,500 years, with modern medical leeches still approved by the FDA for restoring blood flow to reattached body parts and skin grafts.
3
Louse
Pediculus humanus capitis (head); Pediculus humanus humanus (body); Pthirus pubis (pubic)
A wingless parasitic insect — head lice are particularly common among schoolchildren, body lice can transmit serious diseases including epidemic typhus, and pubic lice are a sexually transmitted parasite.
4
Midge
Chironomidae (family)
Tiny non-biting flies that emerge in massive swarms from lakes and rivers — looking like mosquitoes but harmless to humans, with critical roles as fish food and as bioindicators of water quality.
5
Roach
Blattella germanica
The small, light-brown cockroach species responsible for nearly all kitchen-pest cockroach infestations worldwide — fast-breeding, hard to eliminate, and the bane of restaurants and apartment buildings.
6
Snail
Gastropoda (class — many species)
A spiral-shelled mollusk (technically not an insect, often grouped colloquially) that moves on a single muscular foot — an agricultural pest in gardens but a French and Italian culinary tradition (escargot, lumache).
About 5-letter insects
That's our current list of insects with exactly 5 letters. Need a different length? Try the browse-by-length pills in the sidebar, or combine with a starting letter — for example, 5-letter insects that start with A.